Latin America / Cuba

Benny More. The story of the biggest crowd idol that Cuba has given.

Benny More. He is not just another musician, he is unanimously the greatest popular artist that has ever existed in Cuba. It is the symbol, the myth, the legend, as the summary of Cuban popular music that is very rich and abundant. Benny symbolizes the peasant party, the sarao, the bohemia, the download, the coffee, the bar, the theater, the party, the carnivals, the show. El Bárbaro del Ritmo is the best of popular music.

Born on August 24, 1919 at 7:00 a.m. m. in the Pueblo Nuevo neighborhood of the town of Santa Isabel de las Lajas, belonging to the Cienfuegos province. His parents were named Virginia Moré and Silvestre Gutiérrez, and Benny was the oldest of 18 siblings. His surname Moré came from Ta Ramón Gundo Moré (a slave of Count Moré), who according to the tradition of the Congos, was their first king in Santa Isabel de las Lajas.

He was gifted with a flowing tenor voice that he colored and phrased with great expressiveness.

This context was definitive for his future career in music, he learned to play the insundi, the yuka drums, those of Makuta and Bembé, invokers of deities, with whom he sang and danced perfectly, but also to interpret the son, the guaracha and the rumba.

Since he was a child he manifested his great vocation for music, as he would spend all day humming a popular song or improvising and directing ensembles made up of machetes, bongos made from milk cans, guitars made from a board and nails made from strings of string. sew, two sticks as keys, etc. And when he was ten years old, he “grated” a “real” three that had been lent to him, with which he would escape from his mother to the parties near his house.

Moré was a master in all genres of Cuban music.

He could always be found standing on a table singing and reciting a son manigüero, surrounded by listeners. He spent his childhood and adolescence as Bartolomé, without the opportunity to study or get a permanent job. Like his brother Teodoro, Bartolomé was enrolled in the José de la Luz y Caballero School of Public Instruction, where he always stood out for his conduct and application.

He was gifted with a flowing tenor voice that he colored and phrased with great expressiveness.

This context was definitive for his future career in music, he learned to play the insundi, the yuka drums, those of Makuta and Bembé, invokers of deities, with whom he sang and danced perfectly, but also to interpret the son, the guaracha and the rumba.

Since he was a child he manifested his great vocation for music, since he would spend all day humming a popular song or improvising and directing ensembles made up of machetes, bongos made with milk cans, guitars made with a board and nails with strings of thread. cook, two sticks as keys, etc. And when he was ten years old, he “grated” a “real” three that had been lent to him, with which he would escape from his mother to the parties near his house.

Why is the Bacardi symbol a bat?

Moré was a master in all genres of Cuban music.

He could always be found standing on a table singing and reciting a son manigüero, surrounded by listeners. He spent his childhood and adolescence as Bartolomé, without the opportunity to study or get a permanent job. Like his brother Teodoro, Bartolomé was enrolled in the José de la Luz y Caballero School of Public Instruction, where he always stood out for his conduct and application.

His voice particularly stood out in the son montuno, the mambo, and the bolero.

Since he was a child, his aptitude for singing and improvisation stood out, which he demonstrated when, barely seven years old, he escaped to entertain Guateques and parties nearby and stayed singing notes with his mother to prevent him from sleeping while ironing until late at night. .

Benny went through a complicated life, but he was willing to do anything to achieve his dreams of success. With almost twenty years of age, in 1940 Bartolomé said goodbye to his mother at the Ritz Hotel in Central Vertientes, where she worked, and traveled hidden, indistinctly, on a train and in a truck, to the City of Havana. He was definitely coming to try his luck in the bustling city. Since then he would be seen in the famous neighborhood of Belén, with a guitar acquired in a pawnshop, wandering through cafes, bars, hotels, restaurants, and even brothels.

That same year he told his cousin, a fellow downloader: “I’ll stay in Havana, here I get up or I sink.” From then on the saga of the downloads began in the bars on the avenue of the port. Once, recalling those times, he confessed: “I went out into the street with a guitar on my shoulder to sing to the tourists. I am not ashamed of it; Carlos Gardel also did it in Argentina and he is the king of tango”

At that time, the Supreme Court of Art began to be broadcast on the CMQ station. Bartolomé Maximiliano Moré appeared on that program animated by Germán Pinelli and José Antonio Alonso. After presenting it and at the moment of starting his presentation, the bell rang for him. Later Bartolomé returned to Monte y Prado to the Supreme Court and on this second occasion he won the first prize. Possessor of a fresh voice, with a beautiful timbre, sensual and evocative, of a black peasant, despite his misery, Bartolo continued to sing with all the inner strength that Cuban rhythms demanded of him.

One of his escapades Siro Rodríguez, a member of the famous Trio Matamoros, heard him sing in the bar of El Templete restaurant, on Avenida del Puerto, and was very impressed by the boy’s voice and tuning. Bartolomé’s entry into the group led by Miguel Matamoros can be considered his true debut as a professional singer, since with said group he had a stable job for the first time as a musician and made his first recordings on 78 revolutions per minute records.

Benny knew he had a voice, an atche (luck), and a destiny. Perhaps he sensed it, intuited it, or simply trusted in his triumph. When he started with Miguel Matamoros and his group, he already wanted to make changes to the picket line. In Mexico, when Miguel got sick, he was able to direct the group, took command and made the friends enjoy themselves at the El Patio cabaret.

When the contract ended, the Matamoros group returned to Havana, but without Bartolomé, who decided to try his luck alone in Mexico. When communicating his decision to the famous author of the son El que sowing his corn, Miguel Matamoros would reply: “It’s very good, but you have to change your name from Bartolo, which is very ugly. You’re not going anywhere with him. You’re right, Bartolo replied, from today I’ll be called Benny, yes, Benny Moré.

The owner of the business was hypnotized by the tasty atmosphere that Benny created as a manager. After singing with several leading orchestras in Mexico, he stood up nicely with the most famous band of the 20th century: Pérez Prado and the Cuban mambo.

With this meeting, two geniuses came together: in Benny Moré there was talent and natural intuition; in Pérez Prado, in addition to all that, mastery of technique and an enormous facility for making music.

With Pérez Prado he conquered the noble Aztec people on tours of different states of that sister country. Due to the success achieved by Benny, the town awarded him the title of “Prince of the mambo” and Pérez Prado that of “King of the mambo”. He sang like no one else in the world and began his international rise.

By that time Benny’s voice was already known in Panama, Colombia, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Venezuela, and of course, in his native Cuba. In the lively world of nightlife in Mexico City, the Cuban singer performed in countless theaters, among others the Margo, the Blanquita, the Folliers and the Cabaret Waikiki, alternating with renowned artists such as the legendary vedette Yolanda Montes (Tongolele ), the Mexican Toña la Negra, and the prominent Cuban pianist and composer Juan Bruno Tarraza, for whom Benny sang the bolero Ya son las doce. He participates in many films and upon his return to Cuba, he was already sure that he had to be counted on.

Nostalgia for his family, friends, for the Homeland, and the desire to obtain laurels on his Island, where he considered that he was not well known, made him return to his beloved Lajas at the end of 1950. The older sonero was definitely in Cuba, he had left behind comforts, material and spiritual satisfactions, friends and even the loves that winners usually do not lack.

For the next two years, he performed by contract for a program called “De fiesta con Bacardi”, which aired on the Cadena Oriental radio station with the Mariano Mercerón orchestra, and the singers Fernando Álvarez and Pacho Alonso.

As Benny Moré was an exclusive artist for RCA Víctor, this firm demanded his presence in Havana to make different recordings. To fulfill this commitment, he made alternate trips to Havana and thus maintained his commitment to the eastern radio network. After the engagement at Casa Bacardí and master Mercerón, in 1952 Benny Moré returned to Havana.

Certainly Benny concluded an era, closed a chapter of Cuban musical life, that stage of nightlife that was already declining. Benny’s life was related to a world that has already disappeared. Then everything became myths and legends. Benny kept singing, but now it would be on scratch records, which were digitized.

Today’s “oidores” (listeners) must travel back in time, abstract themselves, imagine those seedy bars in the Havana port full of curious tourists. Of Chinese inns that sold “complete” for poor people who passed the hat, after singing through the streets of Havana.